Silva

Chapter Thirty-Four

That man was not aiming his shots to render Irisa immobile; he was playing a game of perseverance with her to see how long she can endure his hunt.

I rush to her and kneel by her side to check the wounds. Her surprised gasp rings louder than the brawling duo on the ground, and Irisa couldn't help but jerk away.

"I'm sorry," she whispers.

"You have nothing to apologize for," I chide softly while grasping her arm to gauge the severity of the wound.

It's a shallow cut from a well-controlled aim; the nail only sliced her skin enough to spill blood but not enough to stab into her muscles.

My hand slides under her arms and lift her trembling body. She steps forward, but I push her back to avoid the violence that's happening.

Norine doesn't seem to care or feel the pain on her body; the nails are pushed into her back like they're her motivation to kill the man under her. She straddles the man's chest, her left thigh on his underarm, and his other arm trapped behind her right knee.

She has his nail gun pointing at his bulging eye as she holds the writhing man still by the neck. Norine's smiling, and a faint reminder of her words hit me when I was listening in on Norine and Irisa's conversation.

Irisa smiled when children were dying, and I wonder if Norine was smiling too.

"We're codependent abominations."

That's what Norine said to Irisa.

Norine looks like a curse; a fiend with fire-red hair and exhilaration dripping in her vicious grin.

Irisa gasps from my side, arms shaking as they detach from mine to step back from the horrid scene. I hold my arm out, blocking her from running to Norine as I keep a finger on my gun's trigger.

Norine pulls on the nail gun. Each thudding nail pierces his face with her joyous giggles, bones snapping savagely while she doesn't stop even after the man had stopped moving. Norine keeps firing the nails until it is sputtering air, yet her mania compels the need to bash his face with the gun itself.

She plops the bloody weapon on the pile of crimson snow beside her and tilts her face to the gray sky.

I wait with bated breath, watching closely to see if she'll attack us in her state of delirium. Norine sighs and slouches exhaustedly. Danger radiates off her body, but she's sluggish when she begins to stand up from the corpse.

"I did a lot of work to become 'Norine' and a sworn cop," she complains hoarsely.

Norine cocks her head at us with red hair covering her face. She sways to stand while rubbing her palms on her pants to rid the blood.

Irisa whimpers softly; I step in front of her to be the physical barrier between them.

Norine flinches, eyes widening frighteningly fast, and lunges at us. The smell of blood thrusts into my lungs at the speed of her sprint, and the frenzy in her gaze feels like shrapnel grazing through my body.

She looks at me like she's going to carve holes into my flesh and hollow out my organs, but that's quickly replaced by cynic indecision when the first shriek of sirens come. It's only a split second, but that's enough time for me to shoot her at center mass.

She stumbles, falling in front of my shoes. Blood pours heavily out her gunshot wound, dissolving the snow as the light in her eyes dim.

I take a short step back and spin around to hold Irisa in my arms. My hand touches bitterly cold air.

Irisa stands mere feet from me with Norine's gun securely between her small hands. Her fingers are in the wrong places as an amateur mistake, and the black barrel shakes mockingly.

Her juxtaposed weariness, anguish, regret, and contentment conquers the fleeting semblance of attachment to me.

She fires the gun with a thunderous sound.

Then, she smiles like she wants to say: "I think I love you."

Searing pain thrives on the pained gasp as I fall to my knees. I press a cold hand to my chest, adhering pressure to the wound while blood cascades through my knuckles with no intention of letting me live.

Irisa drops the gun and walks away without looking back.

Before delayed confusion could scream at me to find out what the hell is this strange turn of events, Norine's voice groans weakly with mirth.

She mutters, "Every step is a game piece to her; how involved you are with her is intentionally manipulated, that's what she does best."

My labored breaths sting the wound, but I manage to look over my shoulder at the woman who turned on her back.

Her eyes blur while she stares at me. "Irisa will say what you want to hear."

The equilibrium shatters as I struggle to hold my weight. I slam a hand on the snow to let the hostile coldness be a wake-up call. Dizziness coerces my vision to spin and tilt in a way that churns my stomach.

I vaguely notice Ivo's sprinting body from a distance when he shouts my name, but my senses are too dull to grasp clarity.

Norine chokes a bloodied laugh. "A tiger can't change its stripes, just like a liar's inability to tell the truth."

I realize, albeit disinterestedly, that I don't understand, nor do I know Irisa.